


An Ape By Any Other Name

by Athaia



Category: Planet of the Apes (TV), V (1983)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 15:50:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17552579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athaia/pseuds/Athaia
Summary: Virdon tries to get home again.





	An Ape By Any Other Name

"This is it." Their guide stepped aside and waved at the machine with a grand gesture. "Professor Hasslein's legacy."

Both men stared at the thing. Burke was the first to recover. "That's not a spacehip, Les."

"No, it's not." Les patted the steel frame of what looked like a cross between a turbine and an elevator car. "But you don't want to travel through space, anyway. You want to travel through time. This, gentlemen, is a _timeship."_

"It's a giant fucking _trap,_ that's what it is," Burke muttered. "I'm not gonna ride anything made by Hasslein ever again."

"But I will," Virdon said. He had been staring at the thing without saying a word ever since Les had opened the gate to this secret chamber, deep under the mountain.

Burke frowned at him. "Don't be stup... reckless, Colonel - you have no idea if that hellish machine even works. Knowing Hasslein, it'll just beam you into the sun, or a hundred million years into the future."

"Or into a parallel universe," Les chimed in. "Professor Hasslein himself admitted that there are several, uh, 'lanes' that one could cross inadvertantly - different futures, different pasts. Different worlds altogether. I must agree with Major Burke's risk assessment here - we never dared to use the _Lethe_ ourselves. We probably should've dismantled it a long time ago..."

"Well, I'm glad that you didn't," Virdon said, and took a step forward as if he feared that Les could start dismantling the machine right then and there. "And I'm willing to take the risk."

He turned back to Burke. "I won't ask you to come with me, Pete, but... if this thing offers me the only chance to go back to Sally and the children, I'll take it. If I don't make it, I'll be no worse off than I'm now. And if I do make it... then I'll make sure they send another ship here to get you back home, too."

Burke sighed and raked a hand through the unruly mop of his hair. "Make sure you log your coordinates - if that ship doesn't turn up in the next three months, I'll come to haul your sorry ass out of whatever hellhole you've landed it in."

Virdon laughed, slightly embarrassed. Since they had crashlanded their ship on this future Earth where intelligent apes had taken the reins, they had been saving each other from the murderous new masters of the planet over and over again. He hoped it wasn't a pattern they would need to carry over into their own time back in the 21st century... or into another universe.

He let Les strap him in, and typed the target coordinates and date with shaking fingers. He was going home. Finally.

Hopefully.

With a last glance at Burke's frowning face, Virdon gave the command to "time-shift."

And the world went black.

* * *

Something wasn't right.

It took Virdon a moment to figure out what it was; coming around felt very much like waking up from a concussion, and he felt dazed and disoriented. He had known beforehand that his clothes would probably draw attention - loose, hand-woven shirts and pants had gone out of fashion a long time before the 2070's - but had hoped to make it to the next public comm terminal without too much fuss. Stumbling around like a drunk hadn't been part of the plan. He didn't want to be locked away in a psych ward before he had the opportunity to prove his identity.

Fumes.

That's what wasn't right. The smell of exhaust gases, and the sound of... of combustion engines. Virdon blinked and rubbed his face in an effort to dispell his vertigo. _They're burning oil? Why in the world..._

He had emerged... fallen through a portal... God, he'd love to know how exactly he had made that passage... anyway, he was standing in a narrow alley amidst the trashcans, blessedly out of sight of casual passersby. He could have a peek on the street from the mouth of that alley without drawing too much attention to himself. Virdon slowly picked his way around broken pallets and half-rotted trashbags, suddenly feeling inexplicably apprehensive.

They really did burn oil. Virdon stared at the bulky cars zipping by, at the few people walking down the sidewalks... one of them held a huge, clunky brick to her ear; its antenna was twice as long as the appliance itself. Phone, Virdon realized after a moment. A mobile phone, probably the first of its kind.

 _That hellish machine missed again. Where the hell did it spit me out? No, not where -_ when _?_

Burke had given him three months... but did that mean he'd have to survive for three months here? It wasn't as if they were living on parallel time streams that were somehow synchronized; three months in Burke's time could mean three day in this time.

Or three years.

First things first. He had to find out what year he had landed in. In any event, it had to be way before the _Icarus'_ liftoff. Judging by the primitive phone, maybe a hundred years earlier...

A woman was slowly walking down the sidewalk in his direction, pulling a trolley behind her. Virdon decided that she looked friendly enough that he'd try his luck, but not so frail that she'd start screaming when a guy in strange clothes would start asking strange questions.

He stepped into her path, smiling his most pleasant smile, and dipped his head. "Excuse me, ma'am..."

But whatever he had meant to say fled from his mind as something behind her, hovering in the sky above the rooftops, caught his eye.

"Yes?" The woman's voice was friendly, and completely unconcerned. He had been right about her, Virdon thought absently. His eyes were still glued to the thing in the sky.

"How long has that been hanging there?" he finally asked, and pointed.

The woman half-turned to follow his gaze. "That? Far too long, if you ask me."

"Is it... hostile?" It probably wasn't the smartest question to ask, but he was just too taken aback for smart questions. They _were_ using internal combustion for their cars, and they _were_ using primitive mobile phones, so this _had_ to be in the past, but there were _no_ records of giant disks hanging over the cities at any point in the past...

... _his_ past.

"Well, they _said_ they came in friendship," the old women said. Virdon tore his gaze from the alien thing, and realized that she was watching him closely, her blue eyes alert and knowing. "How about you?"

Virdon smiled wryly. She had caught on to him - he didn't want to know what conclusions she had drawn from their short encounter, but it would be wise not to underestimate her. "I actually didn't plan to come here at all. I... I guess you could say I took a wrong turn."

"So you are a... different kind of visitor?" The woman cocked her head and regarded him more thoughtfully.

Virdon shook his head. "No, I'm a native of this world. I just don't belong into this time... or timeline."

She raised her brows at that. "A time-traveler! You know, a few years ago, I would've called the cops on you, to get you into a nice psychiatric ward." She gestured at the ship above them. "But a lot has changed since then. I'm a lot more open to outrageous claims nowadays. I'm Ruby Engels."

Virdon smiled and shook her proffered hand. "Colonel Alan Virdon. Pleased to meet you."

"Colonel, hm?" The look in Ruby's eyes became calculating. "What branch?"

"Air Force, though it's been some years. I joined the space program." Virdon wondered what was going on behind those eyes. But Ruby just shook her head with a smile and took him by the arm.

"So, Alan," she said and steered him gently down the sidewalk with her, "from which year do you hail?"

"Twenty Seventy-four." Virdon tried not to gawk at the cars. There weren't that many on the street, amazingly, but the few that were made a lot of noise. "That was the year we made our jump."

"We? What happened to the rest of your crew?" Ruby abruptly changed course and led him down a side alley; Virdon suspected it had something to do with the throng of orange uniforms ahead of them, frisking some of the passersby.

_God, this is like being oppressed by the damn apes all over again, only this time, it's aliens! Am I doomed to jump from enslaved existence to enslaved existence?_

"Half of them died, half of them is waiting to pull me back for another attempt if this one doesn't work," he said absently, "though God only knows if they'll be able to... or when they'll come for me. For now, I'm stuck here - those aliens, what are they? Are they similar to us?"

"Ha!" Ruby's laughter didn't sound happy. "Just on the surface. How I used to joke about those poor paranoids who were convinced that we're secretly governed by the lizard people!" She flicked her hand up. "And now they're here."

_So, lizards instead of apes this time. Pete would have a field day with this._

"Where are we going, actually?" he suddenly thought to ask.

Ruby stopped and turned to him. The setting sun threw sharp shadows across her face. "Well, if I'm not mistaken, you once swore an oath to defend this country against hostile forces, isn't that right, Colonel?"

Virdon stared at her, at this small, harmless-looking old lady, all smiles and twinkling blue eyes. She wasn't leading him to a soup kitchen, or a hiding place. She wasn't a cowering slave, like the humans in the ape-controlled villages.

This woman was fighting back. And there were others like her.

He was still lost, still infinitely far away from home. But for some reason, this truth wasn't as devastating here.

Virdon drew a deep breath and smiled at the resistance fighter. "That's right, ma'am - and it's true across all universes."

Ruby nodded. "Then let me introduce you to our motely band of fighters, Colonel - we can sure use your help."


End file.
